Our Lady of Perpetual Hell

Yay! Lissen here:

You can buy it straight from the band, here, for only $3.99.

Overprotecting intellectual property is as harmful as underprotecting it. Creativity is impossible without a rich public domain. Nothing today, likely nothing since we tamed fire, is genuinely new: Culture, like science and technology, grows by accretion, each new creator building on the works of those who came before. Overprotection stifles the very creative forces it’s supposed to nurture.

–Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Alex Kozinski (from his dissent in White v. Samsung, 1993, which can be read here)

Taking a circuitous route, I found myself at artist Nate Harrison’s site tonight, watching some of his video projects. I found “Can I Get An Amen?” (2004) particularly interesting.

“Can I Get An Amen?” is an audio installation that unfolds a critical perspective of perhaps the most sampled drum beat in the history of recorded music, the Amen Break. It begins with the pop track “Amen Brother” by 60’s soul band The Winstons, and traces the transformation of their drum solo from its original context as part of a ‘B’ side vinyl single into its use as a key aural ingredient in contemporary cultural expression. The work attempts to bring into scrutiny the techno-utopian notion that ‘information wants to be free’- it questions its effectiveness as a democratizing agent. This as well as other issues are foregrounded through a history of the Amen Break and its peculiar relationship to current copyright law.

Here’s the original song (which, ironically enough, is, itself, a reworking of the traditional Negro Spiritual, “Amen”)…

And here is Harrison’s work…

And anybody who wants the Amen Break for their own mixes can download it here.

I was invited to Chase The Buzz again this year.

Toronto Star film critic Pete Howell takes an annual pre-festival poll of film critics, industry folks, festival programmers, bloggers, and buffs to get a feeling about which films are the most highly anticipated at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival. He limits you to 3 films, and your justifications are limited to a single sentence for each.

This year’s fest starts today and runs to the 19th, and I’m heading to town from tomorrow ’til the 14th. Normally, my visit to the festival is planned around the films I wanna see. This year, however, my visit to the festival is planned around a concert I wanna see.

And that’s the Minus 5/Baseball Project/Steve Wynn IV show at the ’shoe on Sunday night.

When Pete asked me for my 3 films, though, I chose them without regard to whether or not I would actually be able to see them at the festival. That was beside the point. The point was to choose 3 films I was really keen to see. Which I did. But, as it happens, I won’t be able to see any of ‘em while I’m there. Argh!!

A Town Called Panic
This puppetoon plays as part of the Midnight Madness programme. It is based on a Belgian tv show of the same name, created by Vincent Patar and Stéphane Aubier. As a kid, I was much more apt to pull the cowboys and indians and horses out of the toy box than the Barbies, so it really does look like my childhood toys got together to put on a show. It is stop-motion animation that is charming in its crudeness (I’ll post a couple eps of the show here so you can check it out yourself). In fact, it is, perhaps, that very “backwardness” of the look of it that makes it so appealing to me. Well, that and the absurdity of it.

Life During Wartime
Writer/Director Todd Solondz has made some films I love and when he describes this as being somewhat related to two of my favourites (Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness), I am curious to see what he does with the characters that recur. Darkly humourous (what some more gentle souls might call scabrous) satire is Solondz’s gift… the screenplays are so smart, the narrative structures so interesting, the honesty so startling.

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
Well, you already know how I feel about Werner Herzog… He actually has two films appearing in this year’s festival. One of them makes me a little nervous–something called Bad Lieutenant, which may or may not have anything to do with Abel Ferrara’s film of the same title (it certainly appears to be related), starring the frequently execrable Nic Cage. It could be great or it could be horrendous. I can’t quite picture it being anywhere in between…

But Pete would only let us pick three films, remember, so I reached for the other new Herzog instead. I hadn’t even heard of it before it was announced for TIFF.

It is based on a true story (which will certainly not stop Herzog from inventing most of the story–on a search for the ecstatic truth, the real truth is just a starting point for him) about an actor who takes a role much too seriously.

David Lynch is the producer. Lynch and Herzog: now, there’s a match made in either heaven or hell, depending on your P.O.V.

In stores tomorrow.

Many thanks to John Sakamoto for the tip-off on this beautiful version of MGMT’s song, Kids, by Ben Lee.

Oracular Spectacular is one of my favourite albums from the past couple of years but, honestly, I pay more attention to music than lyrics these days so I never really thought much about what they were singing. I’d blahblahblahblah along with what I thought they were saying, but without thinking about it. Ben Lee’s solo acoustic version turns the song on its head for me–with the lyrics front and centre.

When I listened to it for the first time on Saturday morning, I burst into tears.

I have found that music is a real trigger for sorrow in recent weeks. It doesn’t even have to be something as complex as lyrics that set me off–sometimes, it is just a chord progression or the key the song is in that is enough to squeeze my heart.

For the first week or two after Tristan died, I didn’t dare try to listen to any music. Gradually, I started to allow it back into my life. At first, just a little–listening to the radio (which is unheard of for me!) during my commute.

Then I listened to a few disks I’d picked up at a local record store–feeding the nostalgia that had been hovering around me since last fall when I reconnected with some friends from university… music from my past.

Later, at my request, my sister gave me a bunch of Tristan’s music–CDs, home-made mixes, and his iPod. A lot of it is rap and hip hop and metalcore but every once in a while, in one of his personal mixes, I’ll get a surprise–f’r'instance, Stayin’ Alive knocked me for a loop and a laugh one day, sandwiched between a couple of metalcore songs. Listening to his music hasn’t been as hard as I thought it would be but the way it is hard is not in the way I thought it might be… What’s hard is hearing one band and wondering, “would he have liked this other band?” Because he’s not around for me to ask.

I keep running up against that subject here–regret, I mean–and I continue to step around it. It is the hardest thing I am dealing with at the moment.

All things (read: “my history”) considered, what would Christmas be without an appearance by Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl and their cheerily sodden “Fairytale of New York”, hmm?

Miraculously, Shane is still alive and will be celebrating his 51st birthday tomorrow. Happy Birthday, Shane! Happy Birthday, Baby Jesus!